"Jim Carriere" wrote in message ...
"Ogden Johnson III" wrote in message
...
Given the number of times the infamous "chicken cannon" has come
up in these fora, your attention is directed to this [Sunday]
evening's episode of "Mythbusters" on the Discovery cable channel
[8:00 PM ET, repeated at 11:00 PM ET for the left coast] in which
the intrepid Mythbusters team takes on the chicken cannon.

Speaking of chickens, aircraft, and engines, this reminds me of a story a
guy I used to work with told me. Not sure if it is true (it probably
isn't), but damn funny nonetheless-

During bird ingestion tests on some jet engine, the was an insufficient
number of "thawed" baby chickens needed to simulate a flock of small birds.
So somebody took out another case from the freezer, left it out to thaw, and
meanwhile everybody went to lunch. Later on, once the chicks had thawed,
the test was ran- birds shot in the running engine, the engine suffered
severe damage and miserably failed the test. After the high speed film of
the intake view was developed, some light was shed on the matter... a stray
cat somehow found it's way into the breech of the chicken cannon. This
probably happened while it was left unattended and everyone was at lunch.
The cat must have been either celebrating its good fortune to find a free
lunch, or sleeping it off the feast when the test was started up... followed
by noise, confusion, a sharp acceleration, blast of air, and then nothing.

I have a mental picture of a spread eagled cat inches in front of a
compressor face.

debunked at http://www.messybeast.com/urbancat.htm#cannon
also a brief mention of cat version of myth at
http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm

PS- I am a dog person.

It's a scenario more likely to happen to a dog than a cat - e.g. to a
terrier-type dog which is bred to go down holes after prey. Cats
investigate spaces but tend not to crawl into tunnels (which is why
it's so damn hard to get them into front opening pet carriers).
Terriers not only willingly go into tunnels, they go into narrow
tunnels they can't get out of and have to be dug out of.